Ajahn Sumedho
This is the second part of the article; Part 1 was posted on May 30. Look for the link at the end of this post for the source, and also the link to the original Dhamma talk from which the article was derived.
The three characteristics of anicca, dukkha and anattā give us this wonderful information that what all saṅkhāras share – from the best to the worst, from the biggest to the smallest – is that they are impermanent, unsatisfying and not personal, non-self. So contemplate that. Whatever you think you are, however you conceive yourself, that’s a saṅkhāra. Listen to what you think or believe you are. Whether it’s positive or negative, it doesn’t matter. It’s the Buddho, the awakened conscious moment where we’re aware that thoughts about me, what I think, my feelings, my body, my position, my age, my gender, my rights – all these are thoughts that arise and cease, rather than a concept to be grasped and proliferated on.
This is the genius of the Buddha, to give this teaching, which is very direct. It’s not abstruse or secretive. So, when we’re giving this teaching to monks, nuns or lay people, it’s not about a privileged teaching for very specially anointed people with high spiritual qualities. It’s available for everyone, and it’s been available for 2,560 years. But so much of culture and civilization isn’t based on wisdom. It’s based on ideals – how things should be. Ideals are what we consider how life should be, how Amaravati should be, how monastic life should be. We can all figure out how it should be. It should be completely fair. It should be equal, just, completely right. And if we join the ‘cult’ of Theravada Buddhism, then we believe we’re better than other forms of Buddhism and other religions, because we believe in concepts about the ‘best of the Buddha’s teachings’, the ‘pure teaching’, the ‘original teaching’. We can be critical of other forms of Buddhism because they teach in different ways. But all of that is conceptual proliferation. It’s using the thinking mind to make value judgments about yourself, the conditions you’re living under, the state of the political or social system.
All the wars and conflicts that we hear about in the mass media are about conceptual proliferation. Each side thinks they’re right, and the other, because they don’t agree, are wrong; we have a critical mind. Growing up in America, we were brought up to believe that democracy is the very best, and that America stands for ‘pure democracy’. That’s what I was told when I was young. Then you find out all the undemocratic things that go on, and think that it shouldn’t be like that; we shouldn’t be hypocritical but should live up to this idea of democracy. But democracy is an ideal. It’s a beautiful word and can be very inspiring, like socialism. But in America, if you say you’re a socialist, you’re considered a communist and a traitor to democracy. Socialism has a very pejorative connotation in the United States, at least it did when I lived there. But in other countries you can call your system socialism, democratic socialism, communism. They’re all words, but none of them live up to their ideal because they can’t – because life is like this. People are the way they are. We’re not all arahants or perfectly enlightened bodhisattvas. What we feel is like this, which isn’t always right or good but it is the way it is. This way of reflecting helps us to accept life as it flows through us, developing and using wisdom with conscious awareness.
I remember joining peace movements when I was in Berkeley, California, in the early 1960s. I idolized peace and there was a very active peace movement, with quite a number of different organizations in Berkeley at the time. The Atomic Energy Commission had an office in Berkeley, so we would go down and protest, carrying signs saying ‘Peace’ because we considered the Atomic Energy Commission un-peaceful, and we were demanding they become peaceful. But while carrying this sign saying ‘Peace’, I looked at myself and started considering, ‘I don’t know what I’m talking about. I really don’t know what peace is. I have an idea of peace, but I personally am not peaceful.’ Almost all of my mental states seemed un-peaceful.
I had joined two peace movements at that time, and I could see there were a lot of jealousies and conflicts within the groups; all idealistic and high-minded peace-niks, people who were demanding peace from governments, from political institutions, from religion, from their mates, from their partners, from their husbands or wives, all wanting peace. But what is peace? When we understand suffering, we begin to realize peace. Our true nature is basically peaceful. What you aren’t are the un-peaceful conditions that arise and cease. But underlying all these fraught conditions, no matter what they may be, is the true nature of consciousness: peacefulness, awareness, mindfulness. This you can trust. This is your refuge. You can’t take refuge in your personal positions or preferences, because they’ll change. Then there will be conflict because other people have different attachments to different ideas.
Trying to find a concept that we all agree on is impossible because we’re all different on that level of saṅkhāras. Can you really help the way you are? Can you really be somebody else, just make yourself into an enlightened arahant, a Buddha or a bodhisattva because that’s the ideal you hold? Is it possible for any of us to force ourselves to become perfect? It’s impossible because saṅkhāras are not perfect. Their very nature is imperfection, change. Ideals are ideal. You can carry thought to the superlative, the best, the highest possible way you can think, but that’s a thought, and a thought is a saṅkhāra, it’s anicca, dukkha, anattā. It changes; it arises and ceases. You can’t sustain perfect ideals. You can attach to them and then be caught in judgments towards yourself and others, because nobody can live up to the ideal that you may hold to.

We often become disillusioned with political systems, with religion, with meditation. How many of you think you’re not a good meditator because you can’t get samadhi, or you don’t have jhānas? You think you’re not a good meditator because when you sit in the Temple, where others look perfectly composed and in samādhi, your mind is going all over the place, and you think that’s your self. And then you think you’re not a meditator, or you can’t meditate, or you’re not really a Buddhist. You create all kinds of proliferating thoughts about it. The direct path isn’t about getting jhānas and perfect samādhi but in recognizing that the conditions you’re experiencing in the present are the way they are: they’re changing. And your relationship to them is witnessing their changingness and being patient, letting them be what they are – they arise and cease. According to action and speech, we do our best to conform to the vinaya, to the precepts. But there’s no vinaya around emotional habits or mental activity – around memories, thoughts or character tendencies – because these are all changing conditions of different qualities and quantities in all of us.
How many times have I talked like this? But there’s only one important teaching. You can talk about all kinds of things: about personal experiences, views and opinions you have about various other teachers, other religious forms. I can use inspiring words about Theravada Buddhism or the Thai Forest Tradition. I can inspire you with inspirational words, but they’re only words, saṅkhāras. And so this emphasis on the impermanent, unsatisfactoriness of words doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with them, but they’re very limited. They are not what you really are. When you grasp or identify with the saṅkhāras that you believe you are, you’re going to be unhappy. Even at their best they’re going to disappoint you.
So where does peace lie anyway? Where is peace right now? Is it here in this temple at Amaravati? Many monks or nuns that I’ve known want peaceful external conditions – no noise, no conflicts – just to live in a state of bliss and peace. We get upset about the nearby Luton Airport when the planes fly overhead, or a dog barks, somebody’s mowing the lawn and it’s disturbing my mettā practice or my peacefulness. We think of peace as controlling everything so that nothing upsets us, nothing distracts us. Well, that’s not the way things are. Having eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body: these are all restless conditions. They’re not peaceful. Eyes are not peaceful. The nose – odours change. Hearing sounds – they’re unpleasant, pleasant, neutral. Sensory experience is not peaceful; its very nature is change, and that’s the way it is. To not want it to be that way is creating suffering around the way things are. Whereas if your true nature is peaceful, then you’re peaceful with the conditions you’re experiencing right now. The way it is right now, at this moment – whatever you’re feeling, whatever you’re thinking – is like this. And in this sense of opening, I open my arms wide, embracing the moment rather than trying to control it into perfect thinking and perfect equanimity that I imagine or remember having. I open to it. If there’s conflict, it’s like this. If there’s chaos, it’s like this. If there’s noise, cacophonous sounds, bad odours, ugly things to look at – it’s like this. This you can do anywhere, whether you’re in the monastery, in the middle of London in a traffic jam or at a meeting with others. Meditation isn’t confined to just sitting in the Temple at certain designated times of the day. It’s integrated into the way we move and change in sitting, standing, walking, lying down, inhaling and exhaling. It’s in the movement and change of saṅkhāras – of saṁsāra – the changing conditions that we’re all experiencing through our senses.
What is immutable, unmovable or unchangeable is this awareness, and we begin to see that that’s what our refuge is. It’s not about grasping it. Real meditation is the ultimate letting go of absolutely everything, which is not annihilation. It is relaxing: not trying to get samādhi, not trying to get insight, not trying to get something that you don’t have, or get rid of what you have that you don’t want. As Luang Por Chah said, it’s a relaxed holiday of the heart. Years ago, I asked him if he could define what meditation is in Thai, and he said, Phakphon thang jit-jai, which I translate as ‘a holiday of the heart’. I thought to myself, ‘I’m certainly not on a holiday of the heart. I don’t know what that is. I keep all these rules of the vinaya and try to meditate and get samādhi and jhānas, and try to get enlightened – it’s hard work! It’s taking a lot of effort, and sometimes I just can’t do it.’ Luang Por Chah always had this sense of open relaxation, of being with the moment whatever was happening. His life wasn’t always just praise and flowers and adulation, accolades and so on. He had to put up with a lot of stress, disappointments and changing conditions that are a part of life. That’s the way things are in what we might consider the best monasteries, not to mention any others.
So this afternoon’s reflection is meant to encourage you to trust what you really are – your awareness – and not to try to become like somebody else or some ideal, some imagined nun or monk or enlightened human being. Enlightened masters are inspiring to us all, but you can’t become an enlightened master by grasping a concept. The master is awareness itself that you learn to totally trust and integrate into your life as it happens. 
Whether it’s praise or blame, success or failure, happiness or suffering, good or bad fortune – these are all worldly conditions. They’re listed in the scriptures as the ‘eight worldly dhammas’. We all want good fortune. We all want success. We all want praise. We all want happiness. But success, good fortune, happiness and praise are positive words that are desirable. We don’t want to be looked down on, despised. We don’t want to be failures or losers. We don’t want to be blamed for things. We don’t want to get sick, get old and die. There’s so many things that we don’t want, but these unwanted conditions are saṅkhāras. They are worldly dhammas because this moment can only be like this, the way it is.
So I offer this as a reflection. May you all benefit from this. Don’t grasp the teaching but apply it to your own experience of life as you live from moment to moment.

Link to the original article:

https://amaravati.org/the-way-it-is-by-ajahn-sumedho/

Link to the original Dhamma talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ihmvg81An0E

[Note about the middle image, a satellite image of a large body of water; the Lambert glacier in Antarctica is the world’s largest glacier. The focal point of this image is an icefall that feeds into the glacier from the vast ice sheet covering the polar plateau. Ice flows like water, albeit much more slowly. Cracks can be seen in this icefall as it bends and twists on its slow-motion descent 1300 feet (400 meters) to the glacier below. USGS]